without you i am something

  

   Carl Getting Plaited in Ghost Town, Belize City, 2004.

I think about death, the process and finality of it. I gave it deeper consideration when it came and Ma passed away. I was undone for a long time. I am still, going forward without her in the world. You change, reality changes when your mother is gone. 

One memory I have of her, she told me a story where a lady called her a racist. She responded to the lady, with a sense of pride, "My kids are black." That was so cool to me, like a declaration. I loved her more for that. 

The one time we got into it about race, she referred to black folks as 

' the blacks'. 

" Ma, you really gotta drop the definite article with that. I hear Jim Crow. Just say black people." 

' Well, excuse me!" She said. 

 It was heartbreaking when we cleared out her place in Denver. I made a playlist of songs she loved, going back in time with each trinket, photo, and letter, including those from my grandfather, handwritten in Italian in the 1960s, on faded parchment. She had saved those letters for nearly 50 years. It's been 8 years since she died and I still have yet to read them. 

After returning home from the desert, I received news of death that made me despair at the misfortunes we suffer. How tragic and unjust death can be, before a person has barely started. 

The sad piece of news was that of my ex-husband's son, Christian. He was a sweet boy who looked like a lot like his father. 

Last Christmas Eve, Christian was shot in the head, his body stuffed in a barrel that was cast along a waterway near Belize City. Keisha, his mother, was devastated. The tragedy was all over the news in Belize. Christian left the house, came home briefly, went out again, last seen getting into a van, and never returned.

It makes no sense to me that a young boy would suffer like that while a fascist goon gets to live - conning his way to a return to power that will bring more chaos and derision to the States. American wrongs from the past, corrected have been undone, forcing me to retreat as a person, more out of caution than fear, to protect myself.

America became a harder, more dangerous place for colored folks after it elected an authoritarian goon. One sister friend fled to Mexico, vowing never to return. Another is on a mission to expatriate to Ghana. I had to make some changes internally and externally toward the American world I inhabit, although I exist in the wider world beyond it. The world is where I found the Garifuna.

Carl and I met in Belize around 2003 and got married in 2004 in his hometown of Dangriga, on the south central coast. Dangriga is a Garifuna settlement town that goes back to 1832.

The Garifuna are Afro-Arawak people of Central America that migrated into Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. The story of how they came to Central America goes back to the slave trade when a ship carrying Nigerians crashed near the St. Vincent and Grenadine islands. Those who survived mixed with the indigenous Arawak and another people, the Garifuna, came into existence. They have their own language, rituals, and customs. My favorite is the jukunu, danced by men in masks with bands of cowrie shells at their ankles. There is no slave story for the Garifuna. They are likely the only people of African descent in the Americas who were never enslaved. 

Dangriga hosts a big festival, Garifuna Settlement Day, each year in November. It's something else to see - the drums, costumes, and dancers. When you enter the town, there's a large sculpture of two barrel drums facing the direction of Africa. 

Even though Carl fell into street hustling as a teenager, he maintained his language and identity. His auntie told us she saw two brown birds flying close together and knew that Carl was returning home to Dangriga with someone close who looked like him. I remember that conversation with her, sitting on her porch. 

Carl and I split up years ago, but have remained cool and keep in touch from time to time. He's an older man now, about 45. I'm 11 years older than Carl. He had Christian with Keisha before we met, when he was 24. He had another child, Trinity, with an American girl from Massachusetts. 

Emily and I didn't get off to a good start because I was an obstacle to the mystical trinity she believed they were, which Trinity was named for. My experience has been that we tend to be an obstacle to the object of a white girl's desire, even if he is, more or less, a buster. 

" Why are you doing his bidding, Emily? " I wrote. "If he wants a divorce, he should handle it himself. We got married in his country." 

( Don't even get me started on the hassle I had to go through with the IRS after making that bold move. I am now, legally anyway, an unmarried person and so I shall remain ). 

Well, Emily did teach him about the healing power of crystals. To hear him explain this to me was charming and amusing. There's a distinction between the hippie and the African. Africans don't trip on rocks and stones. Africans get down in the dirt, to the root of things, by hand. That's where the blues, jazz, and our cooking comes from. 

I got several accusatory emails from Emily that read like a little girl to me. It took her awhile to simmer down. She had nothing to worry about. By 2009, I had given up. My love was toast. Emily was a good person, devoted to him, who eventually suffered the same fate - the discovery of unrepentant trifling, when she cracked his code. 

" Lisa, do you know who this girl is from Idaho? And another girl from Guerneville in California?" 

My eyeballs rolled. Idaho? Guerneville? Jesus Christ. Since the eternal we had ended, they were Carl's chosen followers, the traveler earth girls, because they were easy marks. Had I known better when we met, I would have helped the brother out and pointed him in the direction of the golden jackpot. They're easy to spot. Sunburned, their hair braided with beads to look like Caribbean women. It's the visual equivalent of a three dollar bill with white dreads - it makes no sense, defies logic and reason. Had I done so, I could have saved myself considerable disappointment and gone to Peru. Such was the folly of my dick-stracted, bonkers in love young womanhood. I made a lot of unwise decisions on a regular basis then.

I encouraged Emily to pack it up and go home. I likely saved her from bringing Carl to the States and her life down to ruins. Busters always have women running around in circles, if we allow it.

Belize City can be a rough place, one of the roughest I've ever traveled to. Yankees, any white person in Belize, do not hang out there, but mostly pass through en route to somewhere else. Cruise ships shuttle people in to a tourist market, shielded from the shanties and unpaved streets, and back out to sea. 

The first person I met in Belize City was Edmond, a charming midget dude. I went to a dimly lit bar across from my basic hotel, for a rum and coke. Edmond approached me and started chatting in kreyol. 

" Oh, I'm American, brother." I said with a wave of my hand. 

Edmond was cool. I was getting hungry and he suggested a Chinese fried chicken shop a short walk away. The food there was cheap and delicious. He walked me back to my hotel, to a shortcut through a dark alley. I stopped, thinking I could get jumped by some shady midget conspiracy. 

" Oh no!" I shouted. " I'm not going through there. I don't play!" 

Edmond laughed. "No worry, sis. Shortcut! Your hotel is right pass, to the left." 

After Carl and I got married in 2004, we stayed with friends. I went out looking for him one night in a ghetto district called Yahbrah. He was struck that I went out to Yahbrah alone, a dimly lit enclave of Belize City where young men hang out on corners in the darkness drinking and smoking, listening to punta rock and reggae. I think young brothers hanging out on the corner tends to be universal. 

' I can believe you come after me here! ' He said. ' It dangerous.'

" Have you ever been to New York City?" I asked. " No. This ain't' shit to me! You should be home, not in the streets! You're a husband now." I crossed my arms over my chest and sucked my teeth. 

Carl chuckled as we walked back to the house. "Daaam." He said.  "Wifey burn hot like fiah." 

I was young and had a strong resolve then; being as hyped as I was for life and adventure outside of the states. Travel to me is the expression of my own liberation, not just physically, but psychologically. 

During my first trip in 2003, I went to Tikal to explore the Mayan ruins of the Acropolis and climbed the Temple of the Jaguar - 47 meters straight up - to the summit. That was one of the most beautiful vistas of mother earth I have ever seen. The second was Lake Atitlan at sunrise, which saved my life. 

Tikal was also a peaceful night's sleep, listening to the jaguars and howler monkeys echo through the jungle. 

In 2009 I was invited to Antigua to paint a mural for a community center. I painted for two weeks straight over 8 meters of wall using a primer made of salt and glue paste. During that trip, I came to the realization while watching the sunrise over Atitlan to give up on Carl or it would destroy me. 

That realization was precipitated by a fight (there were many) at an after hours bar in San Pedro that Carl had been banned from. I yelled at him from the balcony, wanting him to care. He was more disappointed he couldn't get access to the poppin social scene. Eventually he left and I returned to my group of friends: Karin, a volunteer from Sweden, Moreno, a local mixed brother, and Richard, a tall, young traveller from Scotland. 

I sat there dejected, listening to Karin be a supportive friend while we shared pints of Gallo beer. 

"You're too good for him, hormiga!" She said. We loved that word hormiga which means ant in Spanish. Every woman in our Antigua crew was una hormiga. 

Suddenly, a drunk Guatemalan teenager approached our table, snatched Richard by the cuff of his shirt and started cussing him out.

" Don't move!" Moreno and I yelled instinctively, our arms extended across the table as if we could intercept potential violence.

Richard froze. Within a few minutes, the kid's friends intervened and calmly took the boy back to their table. 

" Jesus Christ! " Richard said as he settled back in his seat. "What was that all about?" 

" History, my friend." Moreno said. 

We went back to drinking and chopping it up with one another. 

" So....that guy outside was your husband?" Richard asked. " I've seen him around, hustling people and being rude. What is a beautiful woman like you doing with a wank like that?"

" Oh, thank you. Well...that's a good question." I said. " I loved him."

Then a fight broke out at the back of the bar and we ran, bottles and bodies flying around us - like the punk shows of my youth. Afterhours, beautiful lakeside San Pedro can have its Wild West moments. 

In 2003, from Tikal I traveled south, through a hole in time, having visions of ancient Mayans and jaguars in my dreams. The most compelling part of my journey then was losing time. 

I met a super cool Swiss-Italian designer named Valeria, like the plant. We joined forces into Tikal since women traveling together is generally the safest bet. Valeria didn't have a reservation and was able to share my cabin in the jungle. We spent a few days there, exploring the ruins and learning about Mayan astronomy. 

We booked an early morning bus to Rio Dulce in the south. We spent the night in Flores, a town built over a lake with ancient ruins underneath, scattered across the lake bed.  I had a fitful sleep that night in Flores. It felt as though hands were caressing me and I heard whispers in the darkness. I got up to go look at the view of the town, which was still and beautiful under a sky laced with stars. I'm quite the stargazer.

I went back to the room and saw a dark figure in the bathroom, near the toilet. I screamed and jumped on the bed. It was Valeria.

" You are freaking me out!" Valeria said. "What are you doing?!"

" I....uh...I thought you were some Mayan spirit. They're trying to reach me. It's stressing me out! "

" Carina, you need to go to sleep. Pronto!"

The next morning we packed our gear and headed to the bus station. We were about 30 minutes into the ride when we were told our ticket time was wrong; we were an hour ahead of ourselves. Valeria debated with the conductor that this was not possible. We had set our watches to 5:00am, before dawn. 

We still got kicked off the bus in the middle of nowhere, with only a small rural village nearby. I was having the time of my life. Valeria not so much. She wasn't used to such unplanned disorder. Switzerland is nothing but order. 

' It's the Mayans." I said. "They can manipulate time. Remember we talked about that with our guide - how they studied and measured it?  The sundials and structures built to the coordinates of the sun and the moon." 

"You didn't really believe that did you?" She asked. " That's all just mythology." 

We eventually got on the right bus when it passed through. We later learned from two divers on the same trek, making their way to Honduras, that somehow they were an hour ahead of themselves that morning.

The look on Valeria's face was priceless. 

"What did I say?!" I said, excitedly. "That is so cool!" 

In Rio Dulce, we met Clair, a young woman from the UK. We traveled with her to Livingston, a remote Garifuna village, between Lake Isabel and the Caribbean. I felt like I was at the end of the world in Livingston, it is such a remote place. We stayed in an old colonial hotel where we had a dinner of fresh-caught shrimp seasoned over rice with plantains.

During dinner we heard gunshots outside in rapid succession. 

"It's just fireworks." Valeria said.

" No, I think that was a gun, love." Clair said. 

More gun shots through the darkness, this time closer to the hotel. People starting scattering, a woman grabbed a child playing outside on the veranda, and we dove under the table. 

" Get down!" 

Later that night, I went for a walk around the grounds. It started to rain, which was peaceful to me, so I chilled in a hammock on the veranda for awhile. When I went back to our room, the double-doors had swollen shut from the humidity. By then, the girls were fast asleep. I knocked, but they were out. I knocked again. I thought, I could sleep in the hammock, but the mosquitoes will tear my ass up. I had no choice. I had to kick the doors in.

The girls screamed so loud, it startled me for a moment. Their underlying anxiety and vulnerability, in such an end-of-the-world place, was unleashed. 

" It's me!" I said. "It's okay! The doors were stuck!"

" Oh my god..." Valeria gasped, her hand to her chest. " I can't take this place anymore. I'm leaving tomorrow! " 

The next morning Valeria left for the highlands and Antigua, Clair and I went on to Puerto Barrios - a Wild West port town where we met a staggering Mayan. While he tried in vain to woo Clair, he helped us negotiate our passage to Punta Gorda, in southern Belize. 

That boat ride was hardcore, the current rough and choppy. We sat on wooden slats with rope tied at our waists to keep us stable during the ride. We were draped with tarp to keep us and our gear dry. 

Smash, smash, smash for several hours as the boat crested one wave after another and came barrelling down. A roller coaster at sea. 

By the time Clair and I reached Punta Gorda we looked like battered, savage women. It was awesome! Salt-faced and beat, we stopped for drinks at a local bar. It was another 8 hours of unpaved roads to Placencia, an isthmus on the southern coast.

I had an idea.

'Fuck it!' I said. "Let's take a plane to Placencia. We'll save some time. My treat." 

We chartered a Cessna at a rural airstrip, commonly used by drug runners. I'm not a fan of small planes because there's not much structure to protect you if it goes down. 

" Hey." Clair leaned towards me. "The pilot is American." 

Interesting. I wondered what was up with that story. 

Once in Placencia, I was invited to a house party hosted by Miss Radiance, who owned a bar and internet cafe in town. I tried a panty rippa for the first time, a seriously strong Belizean drink of pineapple, rum, and (probably, likely) crack. I was told that a panty rippa will make you or someone else rip your panties off. 

I was fucked up after two or three of those panty crack rippas. I staggered back to our cabana before sunrise, barfed, and prayed for death.  

" Are you going to make it, Chuck?" Clair asked, sleepily. Chuck is a nickname we used with one another. Clair picked that up when she was studying in Lancashire, England. It's the northern Brit version of homie.

" Yesssss...." I groaned in abject misery from the toilet. 

Later that morning, Clair took a picture of me out on the road waiting for the bus to Belmopan. I'm visibly ruined and blurry-eyed in the same clothes I wore when I disappeared into the Placencia night with Miss Radiance and her people.

" You've gone native on me!" Clair chided.

Well, she wasn't wrong. I'm a fortunate woman to be a part of the native human collective. The savages always find me. 

On the bus to Belmopan, I put my pack on my lap and slept for a few hours. A nice brother woke me up when we reached the station. From Belmopan on to another bus full of people, sacks of rice, bundles of plantains, and live chickens. From Belize City we took a water taxi out to the cayes, an archipelago of islands off the coast. 

The more down-to-earth of the cayes is Caye Caulker. The rich and those escaping Interpol or the feds go to San Pedro ( aka Ambergris Caye ). Madonna brought more attention to San Pedro with La Isla Bonita, her 1980s honeymoon anthem that sucks. 

A trippy story about San Pedro involved John McAfee. He created the McAfee security software if you remember the 90s. He was stone cold nuts and became very rich when McAfee was licensed to every PC on earth. He was living in a compound on San Pedro and shot his neighbor in a paranoid trip out that the man had poisoned his dogs, as the story goes.

McAfee fled to Guatemala seeking political asylum ( that's quite a stretch ) to avoid extradition back to Belize. He faked a few heart attacks while in detention and likely paid a few bribes before being deported back to the States. McAfee was later sued by the dead man's family and had to pay $ 25 million to his estate. After that he was arrested on his yacht in the Bahamas for smuggling guns, married a sex worker from Houston, and tried running for president in 2020 as a Libertarian. 

How better off could we have been having a murderous, weapons dealing Larry Flynt psycho for president? Perhaps a better deal in retrospect. 

Caye Caulker is where I met Carl, barefoot with his wild natural hair and handsome face. He was persistent and followed me into a cafe. I was friendly, but thought he was too young and thuggish.

" No, thank you." I said over coffee and went on my happy-go-lucky way.

I later met Harry and O.B., a sister master braider, who tightened up my dreads beautifully. Like a queen! Harry and O.B. were cool and invited me to a local club at the back of the island. Clair took off with a group of young Americans, which didn't interest me much. I knew America. I didn't know Belize. At the club I ran into Carl who was a bit more presentable. He didn't say much, just sat in the shadows quietly. I made the first move and asked him to dance with me.

I was having a good time until I remembered I had the key to our cabana, leaving Clair locked out. Shit. It didn't occur to me to give her the key when our groups had separated. I told Harry I had to go and he walked me back to the cabana, named The Peach on the Beach for it's tropical peach color. We found Clair fumbling with the padlock on the front door.  

" Chuck, where the fuck have you been?!" She wailed. " That American diver and local boys have been fuck all! It's dark and I'm knacked! I looked everywhere for you!" 

I let her vent while Harry was visibly uncomfortable. That was a sketchy situation for him to be in, a white girl having a fit. Trying to diffuse the situation, I apologised for leaving Clair to fend for herself without me or the cabana key. Clair was a down homie to travel with then - just cool. She's married now with two young daughters living a contented life in Perth, Australia. 

The next day, I crossed paths with Carl and had a change of heart. If a moment presents itself - live, baby live! Don't worry about the future! What is the future anyway, but an abstract construct? Tempt the Fates!

" Would you like to spend time with me?" I asked.

The next several years, things gradually fell apart. It came in stages and with experience. 

In 2004 Carl and I traveled by bus to Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua is a beautiful city from the colonial period with cobblestone streets, ornate churches, and historical ruins. I went to a Dia de los Muertos party in one ruin exposed and open at the back, with a beautiful view of Volcan Fuego under a full moon.

Carl and I ventured out one evening to a club set in the back of a colonial building with an open courtyard. Such clubs usually happened after hours and were sometimes raided by military armed with AKs. This was an intimidation tactic used to bribe owners and patrons. Armed police, private security, and military patrols are not uncommon in Guatemala; some good, some bad. 

Carl and I were dancing when a crew of gangsters walked in. I sat down for a break and a drunk lady asked Carl to dance. I thought nothing of it initially. I'm not the jealous or competitive type. I'm a square who trusts myself and the person I'm with. 

Then things got out of hand. The lady was getting more and more provocative and expositional. Blouse up, then off, bra, thong straps and ass exposed to the people. The gangsters and other men formed a circle around them, cell phones illuminating their bodies. 

I signaled for Carl to stop the show. I signaled again. He kept at it.

Someone seated near me saw the look on my face. "Well, in Guatemala we think the black man with the white woman is funny and sexy. " 

Say what now? That was enough for me. I abruptly walked out. Carl and the lady followed me out onto the street. 

5....4...3...2...1

" What the fuck with you?! Are you crazy?! Have some dignity and self respect and shut it down when you or anyone else is being exploited. Those men are dangerous! They were treating you like a monkey and her like a whore. You didn't give a shit! You liked the attention! " 

"She wouldn't stop! " Carl said. " I tried! " 

" So...you blame the lady? You're a man! You should have done the right thing and you didn't! Fuckin idiot! " 

The lady cried, understanding how upset I was.

" Lo siento, lo siento."  I'm sorry. 

 I asked her if she had someone to take her home, which she did. I was so over Carl in that moment. One big 'This nigga right here is gonna get us killed!'  227 cuss-his-ass-trip out, but more like Mary than Sandra. We made up later that night, although I had the sense I was being conned - the way a kid feins remorse to his mother when he's busted. 

Carl was still a vulgar boy, not a dignified man, or a very functional person. Relationships to him were like interchangeable resources; pathways to distraction and amusement. He could be reckless without consideration to the consequences to his actions. Back home, I once visited an orisha in Oakland who gave me the straight scoop. I believe in African magic and insight. 

" You're a maternal figure to him." She said as she puffed on her cigar stub, twirling cowrie shells in her hand. " He was beat and abandoned as a child. He had no guidance, carina. He doesn't know what you know. The streets are in him too much."

Hmmm. That was true. Carl's mother, an abusive woman, left Belize when it became independent of England, leaving him and his two brothers behind. They shuffled between one poor relative to another, neglected and uneducated.  As a teen, Carl left Dangriga for Belize City where he entered the non-violent hustler life; selling seedy weed to tourists and cell phones on the black market. I must have gone to court with him 3 times over petty offences. One court visit, the bailiff asked me straight up for a bribe and he would drop the whole matter - over a petty dime bag of weed. 

I said no. 

I saw other boys shackled at their ankles and wrists like slaves at the courthouse, for nothing other than being poor and unable to bribe their way out of injustice. Carl and I took another road trip to the SuperMax to visit a friend of his who was doing time. Incarceration can be brutal in any society, but the conditions at the SuperMax were barbaric to me, a jungle jailhouse. 

Inmates were given a bucket to piss in, scraps of food, slept on the floors of their cells, and there was no way out. If anyone tried to escape, the SuperMax was surrounded by dense jungle that one needed a machete to cut through. I met a sister in the waiting area with her two kids who was there to see her Rastaman husband who had been sentenced to 5 years for marijuana possession. I never forgot the heartbroken, defeated expression on her face. That's what incarceration can do to poor people. 

Over the years, Carl calmed the fuck down through Rastafari philosophy, but he's never held a square job. He makes a modest living making maracas, repairing drums, and teaching others how to play. I joke that he looks like Capleton now, his dreads wrapped up into a turban. He goes on like an old man about da yoot dem and Jah provides. I'm down with Rastafari liberation, but Carl and I apply it differently. Jah doesn't pay the bills, I do. 

I don't hold on to bitterness. That relationship was not one of my best, but it was life. We shared a connection and experience through time. I watched in awe as he wrestled a huge barracuda on his fishing line. One time, the strap on my flipper broke and I lost my equilibrium trying to stroke with one arm.  Carl helped me as the current was pulling me out past the reef, scaring the shit out of me. Man, he was a fast and strong swimmer. The sea was effortless to him, being naturally from it. 

We swan at Blue Hole near Belmopan, where dozens of leaves cascaded down from the canopy into the hole. 

" Oh, wow. It's like Lord of the Rings!" I said, looking up. The defacto black American nerd girl. 

I watched Carl zig and zag along the jungle walls and into the trees barefoot. I washed clothes by hand ( ineffectively ) with a washboard and learned to grind cassava with a big mortar and pestle, in the Garifuna way. We shared adventure, sweetness, and the fry jacks he made one morning with his grandmother. 

By 2009, as I sat with the sunrise over Atitlan, I had snapped out of it. I was real tired of chasing after hope. 

Carl messaged me a few years ago that his best friend, Alvin, had passed away, likely from covid. They were close when they were boys, running the streets together. Alvin eventually got it together when he married Alnoy, a super cool sister. She had an office job in city government and helped Alvin set-up a small business handwashing cars at their house. 

Alnoy, to me, was proof that a good woman can change a man's life. 

I still believe that to be true. 

I told Carl to go to Alvin's funeral, that he was his brother and he loved him. He shared pictures which were touching and brought back memories. Alnoy had asked how I was doing. In 20 years, she hadn't really aged much. 

Then, this past Christmas, Christian was killed. He was only 18 years old and it was shockingly sad. I know Carl wanted to do more for him growing up, but he didn't know how and had little resources. We had a nice chat and I gave him my condolences. I was glad his daughter Trinity was there. She's a beautiful mixed girl who lives in Cape Cod with her mother, Emily, and three half-siblings.

The Garifuna have a funerary tradition called dugu, which is to honor the dead as they meet the ancestors. Christian was buried in Seine Bight, closer to his father and his people.